CHEM 120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Kinetic Theory Of Gases, Partial Pressure, Torr

• School: McGill University
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CHEM 120
• Professor: Laura Pavelka

Document Summary

An organism lives in an atmosphere with po2 ~300 torr. Assume the atmosphere air is ~20 oxygen and patm is 760 torr. No mixture, so xa/ x of o2 is 1. Required is 100% oxygen tank at po2 300 torr. We care about partial pressure because of space travel, pressure must be maintained so astronauts have oxygen to breathe. They are given 100% o2 with p~160 torr. Po2 = (20/100) (160) =32 torr which is too low, so that is why they need 100% o2. This theory (kmt) explains why ideal gas laws are observed. Maxwell and boltzmann are the two main contributors. Gas particles in a container move randomly, in straight line motions. Particles are separated by large distances, no long range interactions. When collisions occur they are elastic collisions, meaning momentum is conserved. We can calculate the pressure by all molecules along the x axis, and total the sum of pressure for the molecules on x,y,z axes.